On the Wisdom of Keeping Up Offensive Pressure

As we hear about how heroic this victory was over the next few days, remember what went into it: first, superior fitness. Thankfully these women did not rest on their reputation for greatness, but instead put in the hours of training to make sure that if they had to, they could beat one of the best teams in the world a person down.

And just as importantly? Offensive pressure. Relentless, fearless, offensive pressure.

I am glad I clicked on the video. I thought at first that was a broken javelin or lacrosse stick held up in her hand–didn’t know the FIFA tournament was happening nor that the US Women’s team was doing so well.

(sorry for the early OT: the sound you hear is the other shoe falling with a gigantic thud):

Desperate Rupert Murdoch yesterday flew to London to try to save his ­crumbling empire. He arrived in a cowboy-style hat to be hit by claims News of the World reporters hacked the phones of 9/11 victims…

(A NY cop) alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead…

Now working as a private ­investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted the victim’s phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the atrocity…

“The investigator said the ­journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.”

O/T, or back to drones, etc. Barbara Ehrenreich walks us through the evolution of war and war-making to the present, including the drones and rapid reliance on robots. Although war automation has taken off on its own, it also owes its astounding growth to the failure of society to produce soldiers:

“[I]n 2010, the U.S. Secretary of Education reported that “75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit.” When a nation can no longer generate enough young people who are fit for military service, that nation has two choices: it can, as a number of prominent retired generals are currently advocating, reinvest in its “human capital,” especially the health and education of the poor, or it can seriously reevaluate its approach to war.”

She concludes, after her usual insightful laying out of facts, with the following:

“[I]n a 2010 address to Air Force Academy cadets, an under secretary of defense delivered the “bad news” that most of them would not be flying airplanes, which are increasingly unmanned. War will continue to be used against insurgencies as well as to “take out” the weapons facilities, command centers, and cities of designated rogue states. It may even continue to fascinate its aficionados, in the manner of computer games. But there will be no triumphal parades for killer nano-bugs, no epics about unmanned fighter planes, no monuments to fallen bots.

“And in that may lie our last hope. With the decline of mass militaries and their possible replacement by machines, we may finally see that war is not just an extension of our needs and passions, however base or noble. Nor is it likely to be even a useful test of our courage, fitness, or national unity. War has its own dynamic or — in case that sounds too anthropomorphic — its own grim algorithms to work out. As it comes to need us less, maybe we will finally see that we don’t need it either. We can leave it to the ants.”‘